US jury says Monsanto product caused man’s terminal cancer

46 year old Dewayne Johnson was a groundskeeper at a school outside San Francisco. He used Monsanto’s RoundUp weedkiller 20 - 30 times a year. Twice he had accidents whilst using the product which meant he was doused in the weedkiller. In 2014 he was diagnosed with terminal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

A key ingredient in RoundUp is glyphosate which the World Health Organisation has decided is ‘probably carcinogenic to humans.’ Monsanto dispute this finding. Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s vice president of strategy told CNN that there are many other studies which show that RoundUp is safe: “More than 800 scientific studies, the US EPA, the National Institutes of Health and regulators around the world have concluded that glyphosate is safe for use and does not cause cancer.”

Dewayne Johnson’s verdict sets a precedence for thousands of other cases against Monsanto. His is the first case to go to trial but many more are following him. More than 800 patients are in the process of suing Monsanto saying that RoundUp gave them non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Johnson’s attorney, Timothy Litzenburg, said that he and other attorneys know of more than 2,000 cases that are awaiting trial across the US.

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is idiopathic, meaning that its cause is unknown, which makes it hard to prove that RoundUp has caused individual cases of cancer. However, the question that Monsanto needs to answer in court cases is whether RoundUp can cause cancer and if so whether Monsanto failed to warn consumer’s about the cancer risk of the weedkiller.

Sustain campaigns for a food and farming policy which benefits the environment, health, animals and farmers.